The Expert’s Guide to Scoring Décor Deals Online

Essential tips from e-commerce veteran and interior designer Christiane Lemieux, including the best ways to buy—and sell—vintage furniture online

Christiane Lemieux at home in New York.
Photo:
Weston Well for The Wall Street Journal

By

Allison Duncan

Feb. 14, 2019 3:49 pm ET

HOW MANY PEOPLE do you know who have scored an authentic Sputnik lamp on
eBay
for $30? Exactly. When
Christiane Lemieux
sold her interior-design retail brand DwellStudio to Wayfair—now the largest e-commerce destination for home furnishings and décor—in 2013, she stayed on as executive creative director. Thanks to Wayfair, which she refers to as the “university of e-commerce,” she soon acquired PhD-level authority in digital decorating and shopping. Ms. Lemieux’s strategy for her Sputnik killing: “It was knowing exactly what I wanted, putting in as many search terms as possible and sifting through.”

Having learned to deliver luxury at a digitally native price point, she left Wayfair and launched her own direct-to-consumer home-furnishings brand, The Inside, in 2017, with made-to-order furniture customizable in more than 100 upholstery patterns. This month, the Inside debuts a collection of 15 fabrics with U.S. heritage textile purveyor Scalamandré. We convinced Ms. Lemieux—who continues to travel and scour the internet for inspirational textiles—to share a few secrets of the digital design trade.

Before I make an impulse buy online, I tell myself: it’s much harder to return furniture than it is a lipstick or a T-shirt. And without sounding too Marie Kondo, make sure it makes you happy.

The easiest mistake when shopping for design online is: failing to think about a product’s scale [relative to your space]. When in doubt, buy something slightly overscale. A too-small carpet or sofa is sad. If something isn’t perfect, I’d rather it’s slightly larger.

The best online furniture-shopping tip is to: be specific when searching. Put in tangential search terms and the world is your oyster. Add a designer, a time period, other details. Try “gray chair with metal legs” instead of just “gray chair.” And search different sites. If I’m looking for a paperweight from [Austrian modernist] Carl Auböck, for example, I’ll go to
Etsy
and eBay and 1stdibs.

To ‘game’ eBay: be aware that professional dealers, which you can identify by their pictures, prices and other inventory, will likely charge you more of a market rate versus someone clearing out their garage, who might not know what they’re sitting on. Admittedly, this is a vast generalization.

In my shopping cart right now are: drinking glasses from Finnish brand Iittala on Wayfair.

Before pulling the trigger on a big online home-furnishing purchase: measure. And if you’re getting ready to assemble furniture that’s being shipped to you, think about how many pieces are coming with it. Depending on how long it will take you to put together, it may be worth it to hire a TaskRabbit to help.

The room in my house I’d most want to update is: my kids’ bedrooms. Kids change so quickly: One day it’s Nerf guns and the next, it’s Fortnite. I’m solidly in Fortnite now. My son’s a bit of a hoarder. His idea of an acceptable level of clutter and mine are very different.

The best upscale auction site for the home: depends on your budget. Rago Auctions in New Jersey is great and less expensive than some of the super-highbrow name brands. It’s more under the radar.

Something I’ll never buy in a store again is: a mattress. I just bought two mattresses for my kids, they come in a box and it’s so easy. Honestly, who wants to go to a mattress store?

What I’ll never buy online: the finishing touches, like the things I find traveling or that are personal, like books. I like to pick those out myself. I get pleasure from that.

I spend a ton of time—and money—on: 1stdibs, for sure. eBay, too. I love vintage design books and find a ton of them there.

Get the most money and least hassle selling home furnishings with: either Craigslist, Furnishare or eBay. It’s a regional thing. What you want to do is create multiple listings and see where you can get the best deal. Furnishare will actually pick up your items.

My Instagram interior-design pet peeve is: the way everything is starting to look the same—white interiors with nondescript midcentury furniture. I want to see people express themselves more. Design should jump off the page.

I learn about trends by: keeping an eye on the runway in terms of color and prints. There’s definitely this celebration of the maximal that hasn’t been the case for a long time. Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele nailed his pre-fall 2019 show.

The best underappreciated online source of vintage furnishings is: Etsy. Their vintage vendors are really good. You can put “vintage” in as part of the search term.

The best app for design information is: Instagram because of its hashtag filter. If I’m looking for something very specific, like a Carlo Scarpa chair, I can go to #CarloScarpa and see everything available on Instagram, which is a big yield. It feels like the internet of images sometimes.

The best way to use Instagram for inspiration is to: follow a mix of designers, bloggers, furniture companies, photographers and architects, and then follow the people those people follow. It’s really about what speaks to you. You can start to create a look and feel of what you’re after.

For good free design advice on the internet, go to: the furniture company selling you stuff. Design advice is part of the transactional flow for most companies now. And obviously there are blogs like Apartment Therapy and 1stdibs where you can get advice, not specific to you but good nonetheless.

My #1 rule for decorating with the internet is: Make sure you measure. Honestly, that’s where all of the problems happen. Do your job and measure the space, and you’ll be happy.